


The Hands of a Thief

by MirrorMystic



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: F/F, Found Family, Future Fic, Slice of Life, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22730632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: The owner of a certain orphanage keeps unlikely company. And two of the orphans under their roof make an unlikely pair.Snapshots from life spent in service to a spy.
Relationships: The Valkyrie (Fallen London)/The Laconic Prodigy
Kudos: 9





	The Hands of a Thief

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Twitter at @mystic_writes !

~*~  
  
The owner offered her a place to stay. A bed, a roof, a decent wage. A home. A family.  
  
After everything they'd done already, the Valkyrie couldn't accept. She had a home. She had a family.   
  
But that didn't mean she couldn't visit, and visit often. They would march into the orphanage like heroes returning from battle. They'd tell tales of their adventures to starry-eyed orphans, gleaming in the hearthlight. And their benefactor would sit at the head of the table, and smile, with something like parental pride.   
  
And, of course, they would sing: "Hojotoho!"  
  
It was at one of these feasts that the Valkyrie first saw her; a shadow on the stairwell, in a hat, tie and long coat. She'd look like a private eye if she weren't so short.   
  
The Valkyrie raised her glass, her drink sloshing precariously.  
  
"Join us, friend!" She cried out, beaming.   
  
The dark-haired girl only stared.  
  
"What's wrong?" The Valkyrie wondered. She glanced at her glass. "Oh, don't fret. It's only apple juice!"  
  
"No," the girl said, curt. "I was just wonderin' 'bout the noise."  
  
The Valkyrie crinkled her nose. The battle hymn of the Ringbreakers was hardly mere 'noise', she wanted to protest-- but the shadow on the stairs was already gone.  
  
~*~  
  
The owner of the orphanage had a strange reputation. The Tenebrous Thaumaturge, some called them. Others, less prosaic, simply called them a witch.   
  
A hermit, a mystic, a worker of magic and miracles. The Prodigy, for her part, knew better than to believe such rumors. She'd made a living quite literally following in her master's footsteps. She knew the so-called 'hermit' actually had quite the entourage behind closed doors-- a network of spies, agents, and a precious few they'd call friends. She knew her master's so-called 'magic' was smoke, mirrors, and sleight of hand, like everything else in Mahogany Hall. She knew the so-called 'miracle' of navigating the world behind mirrors was a trade like any other, something that anyone could learn with enough practice.   
  
She also knew that her master had purchased a remote, old city temple carved out of a mountain, which certainly wasn't doing their reputation any favors.   
  
Whatever they were, the Thaumaturge had business that brought them all across the Neath, to places the Prodigy could not always follow.   
  
That was how the Prodigy found herself at yet another of the Valkyrie's impromptu feasts, sitting in her master's chair and saddled with the dreaded task of making small talk.  
  
"I like your hat," the Valkyrie noted.  
  
"Oh," the Prodigy blinked. She glanced up at the the Valkyrie's own, a helmet-- really a colander-- decorated with bright blue feathers. "I like yours, too."  
  
The Valkyrie flashed her a grin, and topped off her glass.   
  
Hours later, with most of the orphans put to bed and the Ringbreakers dozing in a pile on the living room carpet, the Valkyrie and the Prodigy remain at the table, still awake, a pitcher of apple juice between them. For someone who dreaded small talk, the Prodigy hadn't yet fled from this conversation. Maybe she was starting to enjoy the sound of the Valkyrie's voice. At least when she wasn't singing in the dead of night.   
  
"Have you thought about what you want to be when you grow up?" The Valkyrie asked.  
  
"A spy," the Prodigy replied. "You?"  
  
"A hero."  
  
The Prodigy fought the urge to scoff. There were no heroes in the Neath. Even those with the best intentions don't do what they do for free. It was the first thing her master had taught her, and they lived that truth every day.   
  
But there was a light in the Valkyrie's eyes she couldn't bear to put out. The Valkyrie smiled. She couldn't help but smile back.  
  
"I'll drink to that," the Prodigy said, and met the Valkyrie's glass with a clink.  
  
~*~  
  
Time passed strangely in the Neath. It was just another of the Neath's many mysteries. One day, the Thaumaturge is rooting out corruption within the Constables' Velocipede Squad, the Prodigy silently following in their shadow. The next, the Thaumaturge is returning from zee after an expedition to Polythreme, chasing down the elusive Jack-of-Smiles, after apparently having been away for weeks.  
  
The Valkyrie accompanied the Thaumaturge on the hunt for Jack. When they returned, the Prodigy was waiting at the door, doffing her cap, dipping her head in a bow.   
  
"Welcome back, master," she said, curt, professional.   
  
The Thaumaturge nodded, inscrutable, their eyes hidden in their hood. They placed a fond hand in the Prodigy's hair. They slipped into the town house, their cloak billowing behind, wearing a smile as subtle and shadowy as everything else about them.  
  
The Valkyrie's smile, by comparison, was downright blinding.   
  
They sat together on a couch in the parlor, sharing the tales of their adventures with their mentor that had somehow occurred simultaneously, one of them, naturally, far more verbose than the other. Their respective adventures played to their strengths and came to fitting ends: the Velocipede Squad's corruption was handled behind closed doors, and the truth of the Thaumaturge's involvement or the depths of malice they'd uncovered would never see the light of day. But hunting down Jack-of-Smiles? Destroying him for good? Such a deed was the work of heroes. The Thaumaturge would be the stuff of song.   
  
Truly, they brought the right agents for the right task. That was what she was, the Prodigy realized. An agent. An apprentice spy. But the way the Valkyrie spoke of them, it was if she rode beside a hero of old.  
  
Eventually, with the gas lamps dimming for curfew and 'nighttime' approaching, the long voyage at zee finally caught up to the Valkyrie. She pulled off her helm, ran a hand through her hair, and stifled a yawn. Then, without any fuss, she slumped down in her seat and laid her head on the Prodigy's shoulder.   
  
The Laconic Prodigy wasn't a girl of few words. She was always thinking, always observing, always planning. She had plenty of words in her head; they just rarely made it out of her mouth.   
  
But when she did speak, she spoke true.   
  
"I missed you," she whispered in the fading light, and something about saying it aloud lifted a weight from her chest. "I'm glad you're back."  
  
The Valkyrie's smiles were like the sun itself, even when half-asleep.  
  
"It's good to be home."  
  
~*~  
  
Under the Thaumaturge's employ, the Valkyrie and the Prodigy had an… unorthodox education. Oh, certainly, they were sure the girls learned their letters and numbers-- often courtesy of private lessons with a rather chatty palace functionary.   
  
Most of their education came in the form of merely following at the Thaumaturge's heels as they went on their business around town, serving as extra eyes, ears-- and, on occasion, backup in a fight. The strangest days were the days they spent sitting in the office on the orphanage's second floor, where they watched the Thaumaturge balance accounts, pen letters, and meet with a litany of strange, strange visitors.   
  
A quiet deviless. An old soldier. A bishop. A tiger. A woman with posture far too dignified to be a mere chimney sweep. A woman the Thaumaturge claimed was their daughter, but neither of the girls could see the resemblance. And, of course, there were the girls themselves: the pair of teenagers sitting at the hooded mystic's left and right hands. If these were the Thaumaturge's allies, one could only wonder what their enemies had to offer.  
  
"They're grooming us, you realize that?" The Prodigy began, one night in their shared dorm. "I'm not judging them for it. But you have to realize we're not family to them. We're pawns. Even the most useful pawn is ultimately expendable."  
  
The Valkyrie sighed, idly practicing sword forms while the Prodigy watched from her bed. She was a longshanks now, and traded her broomstick spear for a dignified sword cane. But she still wore bright blue feathers in her hair.   
  
"They care about us," she argued, her blade whistling as it cut through the air. "I don't know why that's so hard to believe."  
  
Three sharp raps on the door as the Thaumaturge's 'daughter' came by on her rounds.   
  
"Lights out," she called.   
  
The Valkyrie sheathed her blade and flopped into bed. She rolled over, meeting the Prodigy's eyes across the way.   
  
"Listen," the Prodigy continued. "I'm not saying I'm not grateful to have a home and a job. I'm just saying, they're no saint. They're our boss. They're a person with an agenda, just like everyone else."  
  
"Why can't that agenda simply be to do good?"  
  
"Because if it was, they wouldn't need to do it in secret, and they wouldn't hide their face everywhere they go."  
  
"Maybe that's what it takes to do good in this city," the Valkyrie mused. "The Neath isn't kind to heroes."  
  
The Prodigy scoffed. "There's no such thing as heroes."  
  
The Valkyrie fondly rolled her eyes. She reached across the space between their beds and shoved the Prodigy in the shoulder.   
  
"Just go to sleep," she insisted, as she'd done after the dozen other times they'd had this argument. "Just go to sleep…"  
  
~*~  
  
They flew through the jungle, ferns swishing at their heels. They scurried onto the docks and lit the cutter’s engines, the sleek steamship racing off to zee before the colony would realize they were gone.  
  
As soon as the helmsman had a course laid in and they were well on their way, the Thaumaturge let out a bleary sigh and sank against the cutter’s railing. Their apprentices lingered nearby, hanging their heads, ready for a scolding. The Thaumaturge reached up and pinched their nose in frustration… the girls assumed. It was a little hard to tell, with the hood.  
  
“Well, girls,” the Thaumaturge began as patiently as they could. “What did we learn today?”  
  
“‘Always have an escape plan’?” the Prodigy asked.  
  
“‘Stubbornly insisting on progress will not succeed without the support of the people’?” the Valkyrie offered.  
  
“Both good points,” the Thaumaturge nodded. “But what I had in mind was: living to try another day is always a victory.”  
  
The Thaumaturge, it seemed, was tempting fate. For, a few hours into their voyage, an thunderous crash echoed through the cutter’s hull, and sent the Prodigy rolling right out of bed. She threw on her coat-- that now came to her knees rather than dusting the floor, thank you very much-- and bolted onto the deck, only to see a tentacled zee-beast erupting from the depths in a spray of green foam.  
  
“Get back!” the Valkyrie cried, sword in hand.  
  
The beast swiped at her with its tentacles-- and recoiled, stung, the Valkyrie tracing bloody constellations into its rubbery skin.  
  
The Thaumaturge ran onto the zee-slick deck-- and scarcely had time to get their bearings before a rubbery tentacle snatched them up.  
  
“Master!” the Prodigy cried. She flexed her arm, caught the derringer that fell into her grip, and took aim.  
  
The crack of gunfire was lost to the roaring waves, but they struck true. The zee-beast loosened its grip on the Thaumaturge and dropped them back onto the cutter’s deck.  
  
The Thaumaturge landed without a sound, black smoke coiling around the edges of their form.  
  
“Girls! Cover your eyes!” they cried.  
  
The Thaumaturge traced a sigil in the air with fingers that glimmered like stars. The zee beast roared in pain, an unearthly white fire surging across its form, the air filling with a sound like chittering bats.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
The Valkyrie turned at her partner’s voice. The Prodigy threw her a spear-- not her old sharpened broomstick, but a proper Hunter’s harpoon. The Valkyrie spun her sword in her hands and stuck it fast in the wood at her feet, taking her spear in her hands.  
  
The blade sang as it sailed through the air. It plunged into a bulbous eye, staining the zee dark with blood. The zee-beast shrieked in agony and outrage, flailing its tentacles, striking blind.  
  
The Valkyrie slammed into the far railing, hit the floorboards, and was still.  
  
The Prodigy was by her side in an instant, a wretched fear in her chest, the Valkyrie’s name an urgent whisper across her lips. She pressed two fingers to the Valkyrie’s throat-- found a pulse, thank God-- raised her derringer, and fired. Her shots punched into the zee-beast’s rubbery hide. They might as well have been mosquito bites, for a beast so large.  
  
Her derringer clicked empty. She threw it aside and drew the knife she kept hidden in her boot, crouched protectively over the prone Valkyrie. She didn’t know what good a knife would do against a zee-beast. But in that moment, the Prodigy had decided: she would rather die than let that filthy creature touch her friend again.  
  
The Thaumaturge appeared before them, looking smoky and insubstantial in the half-light. They flexed their fingers, whispered something the Prodigy could just barely hear… something that sounded like--  
  
_“Thunder, hear my cry.”_ _  
_ _  
_ The Prodigy woke with a gasp. She must have blacked out for a second. Memories drifted, unfocused, uncertain. The Valkyrie was below her, unconscious, but breathing. The Thaumaturge was in front of her, right hand clenched in a fist. And the zee-beast…  
  
The zee-beast was a smouldering ruin, crackling with white lightning, its broken body slowly sinking into the abyss.  
  
The Thaumaturge turned, their voice hoarse.  
  
“Are you two alright?”  
  
The Prodigy flinched.  
  
“Y-Your eyes…”  
  
Stormy grey, glinting like lightning. The Thaumaturge frowned, slipping a pair of amber glasses back onto their nose and pulling their hood back down.  
  
The Prodigy blinked, dazed. “What did you do? What was that?”  
  
“A dream of thunder,” the Thaumaturge murmured. They nodded to the Valkyrie. “Let’s bring her downstairs.”  
  
Belowdecks, the Thaumaturge laid the Valkyrie out on her bunk, an anxious Prodigy at their heels. She was whimpering in her sleep, as if in the throes of a nightmare. The Thaumaturge laid a hand on her forehead, tracing a sigil into her skin. There was a flash of green light, and the cabin filled with the scent of honeysuckle and spring. The Valkyrie’s breathing relaxed, and she settled into a deep sleep.  
  
“I need to check in with the crew,” the Thaumaturge murmured. “Stay with her.”  
  
The Prodigy hardly needed to be told. As soon as the Thaumaturge slipped away, she was at the Valkyrie’s side, her thoughts racing with things unsaid.  
  
It’s amazing the clarity that adrenaline can bring. The sort of purpose one can find in peril.  
  
It struck her in that moment, like lightning through the clouds.  
  
The Valkyrie stirred. The Prodigy snapped alert, squeezing her hand.  
  
The Valkyrie blinked up at her, drowsy. Even now, she was smiling like the sun.  
  
"I saw what you did for me," she murmured. “Are you sure you still don’t believe in heroes?”  
  
The Prodigy choked out a sob and pulled the Valkyrie into a bruising hug, smiling through her tears, finally realizing that this feeling in her chest had a name all along.  
  
~*~  
  
Time passes strangely in the Neath.  
  
She dreams. Or perhaps she remembers. Or perhaps she foresees.  
  
They both have the same dream. (Is sharing dreams part of their Master’s magic?) They’ve gathered at the Wolfstack Docks-- the Ringbreakers, all grown up, the kids from the orphanage, the nurses, the staff, everyone-- and they’re there to say goodbye.  
  
The mission team stands assembled, ready to board their ship and embark on their voyage south. Diplomats. Spies. Scholars. Mercenaries. A deviless with golden eyes stands among them, along with a woman, proudly wearing her constable’s uniform for the first time in years.  
  
The Thaumaturge takes both their hands with a fond squeeze.  
  
“I leave everything to you,” they intone. “Here, at last, is the day where I shall go somewhere you cannot follow. I cannot promise that I shall return. And if I do succeed, the world will never be the same…”  
  
Ripples, like drops in a pond. The world shifts, blurs into a jungle with violet rivers and golden skies. Framed mirrors hang like windows in the air.  
  
The Thaumaturge, for all their melodrama about possibly never seeing them again, still sends letters from the Mountain of Light. They visit the girls in their dreams, wearing a sly smile and glinting cosmogone spectacles.  
  
The girls dream. (Or remember. Or imagine.)  
  
They wake to the sound of their new mistress, the Shadowed Scion, rapping at their door. She pokes her head in-- and they remember that she’s not all that much older than them, all considered, though they still can’t quite see the resemblance to the former owner.  
  
“Morning meeting, ladies,” she reminds them. “We’re all waiting for you.”  
  
The years haven’t changed them too much, all told. The Prodigy still wears a hat, tie, and coat. The Valkyrie still wears feathers in her hair. But the Valkyrie’s eyes are touched with peligin, and her spear gleams white as a bone; and the Prodigy’s eyes flicker with irrigo, so like violet and yet so different, having forgotten more secrets and spycraft than most will ever know.  
  
They burst into the office with their usual bombast, the Valkyrie flinging the doors open so hard they bang into the walls. The Prodigy follows a half-step behind, ever watchful, ever vigilant.  
  
There was money to be made. Secrets to uncover. Agents to deploy. And, when all was said and done, there was also an orphanage to tend to, no matter its status as the incognito seat of an intelligence network.  
  
The Valkyrie’s spear haft thuds into the floorboards like a judge’s gavel, snapping all eyes in the room to her in an instant. Her grin is brighter and more audacious than any light in the Neath; and the Prodigy, her shadow, echoes the gesture with a subtler smile, like the moon reflecting the sun.  
  
“Alright, everyone,” the Valkyrie declares, catching the Prodigy’s eyes with a wink. “Let’s get to work…”   
  
~*~


End file.
